I am Nalumu Rose Ritah am an S4 vaccist of Lubiri s s , Kampala.

When I heard about the Science With ICT holiday camp which was to be held at Gayaza High School (16- 20) Dec 2007 by SchoolNet Uganda, I contacted SchoolNet Uganda to allow me attend the camp. SchoolNet Uganda asked me to write a motivation letter giving four reasons why I wanted to attend the camp for S6 science girls when I was just an S4 vaccist.

In my motivation letter, I explained that I wanted to:

•  Know more about ICT and how to use the internet for my studies.
• Social network with girls from different schools to share my skills and experience and also to learn from them.
•  Improve on my typing skills.
•  Improve on my communication and presentation skills.

I felt extremely happy when I received an invitation to attend the camp from SchoolNet Uganda.

Before attending the science with ICT holiday camp:

• I used to send emails only to my friends.
• I had never used computers for science experiments.
• I had heard that some people use computers for studies but did not know how they do it.

When we were briefed about the camp programme, I developed two fears; that what was to be taught would be too difficult for me to understand and that I would be lost attending with S6 students since I was just an S4 vaccist.

The 5 day holiday camp had a very tight programme starting at 8:00am and officially ending at 6:00pm daily. The activities ranged from presentations by facilitators, brainstorming sessions, Internet research, science virtual experiments and presentations by students at plenary.

I had a challenge of completing all the assignment given to us.

The computer lab remained open up to 11:00 pm for students to complete assignments and for private work.

During the science with ICT holiday camp, I learnt:

• To download and attach documents to an email.
• To send the same email to many people at ago using a mailing list. We subscribed our selves to the  uderb mailing list, which has helped me to still communicate with my colleagues.
• To associate and work with students from different schools.
• To use computers to do virtual science experiments.
• To use the internet for academic research.
• To use power point for presentations.

I actively participated in the brainstorming sessions and had an opportunity of presenting my Internet research at the plenary.
This greatly improved my confidence and self esteem.

I am so thankful to SchoolNet Uganda for having allowed me to attend the camp and would like to advise SchoolNet to continue introducing ICT in different schools so that at such future camps time is not spent explaining what ICT is but instead facilitators concentrate on showing the importance of ICT and how it is used by different people.